Northborough-Shrirang Sane, a sixth-grade student at the Robert E. Melican Middle School has won top honors in the 2013 Anti-Tobacco Poster Contest, an annual educational event to alert schoolchildren to the dangers of tobacco and smoking sponsored by the Massachusetts Medical Society (MMS) and the MMS Alliance.
Sane was one of just 12 winners selected from more than 3,700 entries to the competition. His entry was titled “Do you want a cigarette? No!” and demonstrated the dangers of smoking by listing many of the chemicals that enter the body through smoking.
The competition, open to youngster in grades 1-6 throughout Massachusetts, asks students to create an original poster that ties in with certain themes for their grade. The themes by grades are: grades 1-2, “How tobacco is bad for your body”; grades 3-4, “How using tobacco affects other people”; and grades 5-6, “Why I won's start.” Four entries are selected in each category, and the winning entries are chosen on the basis of originality, artistic merit, and relevance to the theme.
Winners were honored at a May 21 event at the Massachusetts State House in Boston, where they received a certificate and a gift card for books as prizes. Winning entries will also be included in a 2014 calendar that will be distributed to schools, pediatricians, and family physicians across the Commonwealth.
Presenting the awards were Ronald Dunlap, M.D., MMS president; Janet Kent, M.D., member of the MMS Committee on Student Health and Sports Medicine; and Paula Madison, president of the MMS Alliance.
The society, with more than 24,000 physicians and student members, is dedicated to educating and advocating for the patients and physicians of Massachusetts and publishes the New England Journal of Medicine.
The MMS Alliance is the organization of physicians” spouses committed to promoting good health among the citizens of Massachusetts and to advancing the health and well-being of the medical family.
This year marked the 18th year that the Massachusetts Medical Society has conducted the contest. To view the winning entries, visit www.massmed.org/tobacco.
